Michael A. De Leon is a graphic designer by day, but wears many hats in his off time. In 2004, after several years of covering the Spurs, he started Project Spurs, a Spurs team fansite as an outlet to provide content to Spurs fans, while continuing to write for himself and learning the ins and outs of online publishing and web design. He has since built a writing team and started a popular weekly Spurs podcast called the Spurscast.

Note: This is an mySA.com City Brights Blog. These blogs are not written or edited by mySA or the San Antonio Express-News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.

The 2010-2011 San Antonio Spurs: What’s the difference?

When San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich asked the team for a fast start, I’m sure even he couldn’t imagine that they would be 12-1 after 13 games. Knowing him, he still is not satisfied with the team winning 11 in a row with two impressive wins on the road against the Utah Jazz and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

But what can Spurs fans take away from this hot start and what does this team have that last years team didn’t have? Let’s take a look.

Level of competition.

One of the major differences this year from last, is the Spurs are beating the teams they are supposed to beat. Last year the Spurs would seem to play down to the competition level of the teams and they paid the price by losing close games to sub-par teams. Remember the loss to the New Jersey Nets, the worst team in the NBA, last season?

In the playoffs, they paid the ultimate price by having to settle for the seventh seed instead of a top four seed, which would have gave them home court advantage in the first round. That was the lowest seed the Spurs have clinched in the Tim Duncan era.

Panic mode.

Another change from last years team to this years is the “panic button.” If you watch enough basketball it is easy to notice every team goes on a run at one point or another in a game, sometimes even two or three runs. When this happened to the Spurs last year, they went in panic mode and would just take the first shot they even caught a glimpse at.

This year, they are more relaxed and take their time to find the right shot they want whether it takes four, five or six passes. The team is looking like more of the Spurs teams of old rather than the team we saw all of last year.